Institutional change

Matt announced today that the changes to the organization are complete for now – no more staff cuts.

The Office of Technology has been eliminated, and the separate Program Management activity has been merged into BRC. The three Mission Heads now report directly to the Director, and the Divisions report to the Deputy Director. Matt will talk more about the changes and what they mean on June 6th.

For ESS, there are no immediate changes. We are thinking about the organization, and how ESS works, but our focus is about how we relate to the Missions and the other Divisions.

For CPT, there is essentially no change in organization, but there is change in focus. Doris still leads CPT, but the list of projects that CPT must execute is being reviewed. As a result, ESS’s agreement to loan a couple of half-people to do project management is on hold. That work could pick up quickly, but it depends on both how long it takes to do the reprioritization, and the results of that exercise.

Warren Miller is now also admitting that he is leaving ESS. He isn’t sure how this will work exactly, but DMS is short a CE. We still have a CE position, and it’s likely that we’ll see something posted, at least internally, in the near future.

I am concerned about the lack of urgency I feel from the ESS Division Office to deal with the internal and external changes. We seem to be hung up in talking about talking, and not even talking about changing. I think we need change, and I think we need leadership to achieve change. We face declining budgets, a shrinking staff, and dissatisfaction from the people who pay for us. If that doesn’t call for change, I don’t know what does.